


star spangled eyes

by Goldmonger



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, DCU, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, all aboard this new ship, eventually, flagshot, this is very gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 09:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7709326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick Flag delivers letters. Floyd Lawton pines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	star spangled eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I did this in a day. I have no rational explanation other than the movie made this pairing damn near canon. I love it.
> 
>    
> Title from Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Fortunate Son', on the movie soundtrack :)

Some time after the Deal had been struck, Waller sent them back to their little mouse holes to rot. Again.

There was always the implication that they might be summoned to do their unwilling civic duty sooner rather than later, which was of course, the very nature of the Deal. Floyd awoke every morning to the same grey ceiling of the same grey cell and wondered if that particular day was the day she’d come for him. For them.

Before the Deal went down, Floyd woke up, cleaned his teeth, ate the house’s best gruel and read his James Patterson novel. Griggs liked to annoy him at lunch, which was either sparse or nothing. He beat the shit out of some punching bags, did some cardio that left him lightheaded due to the gnawing in his stomach, and took a nap. Then came dinner, which was usually cold and clammy. He’d tell the small picture of Zoe a list of everything he’d buy for her when he got out, and all the places he’d take her. Disneyland. The Great Wall of China. Stonehenge. Hell, Mount Everest, if she wanted. Once in a while he prayed, or traded insults with Griggs, if he was feeling rebellious. Then he slept, and the day was recycled.

After the Deal, not much changed, except in every way something can be changed – and still remain the same. He corresponded with his daughter, received every one of her letters with reverence. He treasured the most mundane of events in her life, and not just the ones she wrote about. Floyd couldn’t have been happier that Zoe’s life was relatively boring; it meant she had stability.

That, and Flag came to visit him, rather that Griggs’s leering and halitosis.

It was roughly 0900, approximately a week after they killed the witch (ding dong) and two days since he’d been able to see Zoe. Time was a slippery agent in Belle Reve, but Floyd maintained a strict rest regimen to ensure he could count the days that passed. He woke with the sun and slept with it, though it was easier when he got to recognise the guards on the weekend shift.

He was smiling stupidly at a hasty drawing scribbled in a letter from Zoe, one which detailed himself trading jokes with Superman. He supposed it was meant to be flattering that the big blue fella was laughing at what _his_ caricature was saying. Zoe loved the Superman after all.

“That a new one?”

Floyd looked up, and was greeted with the habitually grim face of Colonel Flag. His mouth had an apologetic twist to it, which Floyd supposed was as much graciousness as he was likely to expect.

“Yeah.” He folded it up, then thought better of it and heaved himself off his bed, poking it through the bars in the door. Flag looked a little stunned, so he shook the page emphatically.

“Check it out. She drew me talking to Superman. Never realised she was such a Picasso, honestly.”

Flag scanned the picture in the margins and smiled, a flickering thing that remained ghostly on his face after he handed the letter back.

“A Superman fan?”

“Aren’t we all supposed to be?”

Flag shrugged. “He did good while he was here. The Earth’s worse off without him.”

Floyd snorted, sliding the letter back into its envelope.

“Alien Jesus inspires the masses, all right. What do you want, Flag?”

The soldier seemed to shuffle his feet, fascinated by the ground all of a sudden.

“I just wanted to make sure you still had the letters, and to tell you that the next one’s on the way. You could probably compile the amount of words your kid’s written into a book by the end of the month.” He scratched his head awkwardly over his baseball cap. Floyd was enjoying his ostensible discomfort immensely.

“Don’t worry there, Colonel,” he said lightly. “Nobody’s taking these away from me ever again.”

Flag nodded briskly. “I should get going,” he muttered. “I’m meant to oversee the installation of Croc’s new flatscreen.”

Floyd blinked. “That’s pretty low priority for you. What, all of Waller’s other lackeys got themselves blown up?” He smirked at Flag’s wince. “It’s a high-risk vocation, you have to admit. Helicopters dropping like flies.”

“Actually,” Flag said curtly, “I was told it’s because I’m the only member of military personnel he won’t eat on sight. Apart from GQ, but he transferred. Understandably.”

“You know that’s ‘I love you’ in reptile, right? You should be honoured.”

“Yeah. Right,” grumbled Flag. He rubbed his neck wearily. “See you, Lawton.”

“You will?”

Flag halted in his departure and floundered for a moment. He looked hilariously out of depth, which wasn’t a novelty by any means, but no less entertaining.

“… Yes?”

Floyd inspected the bars on the door. “Good,” he said simply, and returned to his bed. He riffled through Zoe’s letters again, settling on one from February that went into earnest detail about her school’s production of _Annie_. His daughter had played the curly-haired orphan, which had once left him with a hollow feeling in his chest, but now just made him proud.

 

*

 

Days passed, and Flag showed up again, this time toting another letter.

“Must’ve been an eventful weekend,” he teased, and Floyd wanted to roll his eyes.

“It has to be, when you compare it to in here.”

“Point.”

Floyd handed him a letter of his own, Zoe’s name stamped neatly across the back. Flag took it with a nod, and turned to leave. Floyd opened his mouth to ask him not to, then shut it with a snap, half annoyed at himself, half bemused as to what incentive he would have offered to encourage him to stay anyway. He could have insulted him again, maybe. Floyd shook his head.

Zoe spoke about the A she’d gotten on her math test, how weird it was having soldiers in the apartment, and how cool Colonel Rick was. Floyd kneaded his forehead and chortled once.

 

*

 

An explosion rumbled through the facility another day after that, and then the klaxons sounded. Floyd positioned himself opposite the door, his stance offensive and better prepared this time – he hoped. No-one came.

There was a great deal of shouting, and slamming of doors in the distance, and the alarms didn’t stop for a long time. After a few hours it quietened down, but by then Floyd was already reclining on his bed, deep in The Great Gatsby and utterly oblivious to it all. He wondered vaguely who’d caused the kerfuffle. If he had money to bet, he’d guess Boomer, although the spectacle of it all suggested someone a little more excitable.

“Harley’s gone then,” he said contemplatively the following afternoon, as Flag paced in front of his cell and ran a hand through his hair every so often.

“Lawton, please. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

Floyd caught his eye from between two steel bars.

“That girl’s off her rocker, and the Joker’s even nuttier. Trying to predict their actions is pointless.” He tilted his head. “Good for her though. The Bat was getting a little paunchy. Needs a runabout.”

Flag looked almost disappointed. To Floyd’s surprise, it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Harley won’t be stealing purses by the Joker’s side, Lawton. And the Bat won’t be the one doing the running.”

He left then, and the cell had more shadows.

Harley liked to hum the same nursery rhymes he’d warbled to Zoe when she was a baby. How did it go again?

He curled up on his side, the bed like solid rock underneath him. _When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall…_

 

*

 

Flag didn’t visit him for another week, and by that time Floyd’s attitude had mutated from amusement, to indifference, to irritation, to concern, before finally landing on contempt. That was good. That was comforting. He knew how to host it.

Flag had dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was too pale. Floyd’s contempt slithered from him like shed skin.

“Not to sound like your bartender, Colonel, but man. You look like shit.”

“Always a pleasure, Lawton.” He pushed an envelope through the bars.

“From your daughter.”

Floyd exchanged his letter for hers gratefully, and this time managed to make a noise before Flag had turned to go down the hallway. The soldier hovered expectantly.

“You find Harley?”

Flag’s expression soured. “No,” he said.

Floyd put his hands on his hips and tried to appear impassive from the small square through which Flag could see him.

“You gonna send us out there to find her? Him too?” Green haired, a perpetually bloody mouth, the wild eyes of a sociopath without Harley’s sweetness. Nausea roiled inside him.

Flag considered him briefly. “Maybe,” he retorted simply, and turned on his heel, stalking out of sight. Floyd’s hands didn’t tremble, because they never did – but he hated how he felt. Helpless; the rabbit this time, instead of the fox. Though at least a rabbit could run away.

A marionette then. Being torn to shreds by real teeth.

 

*

 

“I brought cards.”

Floyd almost jumped, but reigned in his reflexes, peering at the door. He dropped Alex Cross’s adventures on his pillow and approached Flag cautiously.

“They laced with explosives?”

“Only if I think you’re about to win.”

Floyd tried not to seem too interested as Flag listed off the games he’d learned during his service as suggestions. He was relieved Flag had come back, happy for some genuine human interaction, and humbled that Flag had come apropos of nothing - and bearing _games_ for him, no less.

“Gin Rummy? What are you, eighty-six?”

Flag looked chastened. “My dad taught me that one. It’s decent.”

Floyd sighed. “You’re the boss-man, Colonel. Rummy it is.”

Flag didn’t comment on his jibe, but it clearly made him twitch. So he didn’t like being reminded of his authority – or responsibility as it were. Interesting. That was new.

 They played for two hours, and Flag only threatened to murder him twice.

 

*

 

_Dear Dad,_

_Colonel Rick is so awesome!! He said he’d give you the snickers and the mars bar that I sent did you get them?? He said he would give them to you because ‘your not you when your angry’, like the commercial! He’s so nice, and funny! And he says you’ll get to see me on my birthday in a few weeks!!_

_By the way, we were talking about Superman and I said I was going to be him for Halloween and he said you really wanted to dress up as Superman too!!! Dad that would be so so amazing if we did that this year!!_

_Anyway, I put in my latest creative writing essay for school, and the photo of me and Mandy from the field trip to Wayne Biotech, and I’ve got to tell you about what Ms Davidson said about soccer tryouts…_

 

*

 

Floyd was still chewing the mystery meat from his evening meal.

“I didn’t even think she’d want to trick-or-treat this year.”

“I must have really sold the idea of you in costume then,” Flag said, inclining his head to hide a smile. “Plus, I doubt you’d be welcomed by the parents of a bunch of middle-schoolers at a formal event, no matter the holiday in question.”

Floyd grumbled about the Superman thing, but only half-heartedly.

“You ate my fucking Snickers,” he accused suddenly, and Flag dug in his jacket pocket, producing three slightly dented candy bars.

“I was tempted,” he admitted, as he delivered them through the tiny barred window one by one. Floyd accepted them greedily, even knowing he’d have to space them out over weeks, if not more.

“Waller didn’t want to allow it. I had to scan a damn chocolate bar for bullets. What you’d do with a lone shell, I don’t know.”

Floyd hugged the candy to his chest. “You’d be surprised,” he drawled, mostly to see Flag’s eyebrows do their exasperated dance. “Pinochle?”

“Whatever. Yeah.”

 

*

 

Some days later, Flag was dealing out the cards for their second game when Floyd piped up: “This is bugging me.”

Flag’s eyebrow quirked inquiringly.

“Playing though this little box is infuriating. You could’ve been cheating this whole time.”

Flag leaned back from the door, chewing his lip as though conducting serious arithmetic in his head.

“You’re right,” he said finally. He turned his head and whistled, footsteps jogging toward him obligingly after a fraction of a second.

“Sir?”

“Open the door, Lieutenant.”

The young man was barely pushing twenty five, and his eyes were comically wide as they flicked between Flag and Floyd. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cartoon.

“Sir, I’m under orders not to engage the subject, nor open the cell without a complement of Special Ops professionals to -,”

“Lawton,” interrupted Flag, fixing Floyd with a dark, piercing gaze. “Are we gonna have a problem if I open this door?”

The lieutenant and Flag were looking at him with radically contrasting expressions, one petrified, the other grudging and slightly amused. Floyd could feel his extremities tingle with anticipation, the urge to flee as tantalising as the sky to a crippled bird. Like that time at the gun range, Flag was trusting him – not because it was a necessity, but because he could, perhaps even wanted to. It was up to Floyd what he did with that. Evidently.

“No sir-ee,” purred Floyd, holding his hands up either side of his head and taking a step back. “I’m docile as a lamb.”

Flag grinned at the lieutenant. “See? He knows how any funny business will end up. He’s done the rounds before. Ain’t you, Lawton?” 

Flag brandished the pack of cards like a peace offering and dropped them in his front pocket. “Open the door.”

The young soldier looked thoroughly miserable, but he went about entering authorisation codes and undoing the electrified bolts, wrenching the handle down to get it to open. The door’s hinges whined as it swung out, and Flag stepped inside the cell.

In half the time it took for Flag to process what had happened, Floyd had him pressed up against the wall, his forearm across his throat. The lieutenant was yelling something, his radio crackling and his .45 ACP pistol cocked.

“This would be classified as funny business,” growled Flag, glancing down at Floyd’s arm pointedly. Floyd grappled at the Colonel’s waist for a moment, grimacing when he came up short.

“You came in without a gun. Pretty stupid.”

“Or pretty smart, since you work exclusively with guns.” Flag didn’t look remotely frightened, or even angry. His voice was cool, measured, like this was something he was used to happening. Floyd wondered how many times he’d had to talk down a ravenous Croc.

“’S’matter, Deadshot?” demanded Flag. “Surely you have a plan that extends past ‘grab the guy who does me all the favours that makes life worth living in this hellhole’?”

There was a parade of heavy footfalls approaching down the corridor, and the lieutenant was still issuing reedy threats. With an aim that shaky, he’d probably miss Floyd altogether and hit his superior officer instead. Floyd let his arm fall, retreating back towards his bed.

“My name’s Floyd,” he said quietly.

Flag stopped the tactical squad at the door of the cell with a single shouted command, making them lower their guns in confusion. Floyd wished he could have seen the moony face of the young lieutenant, but his view was filled up with Flag and a still-open door.

“Take a walk,” he instructed the men outside the cell. “I’ll yell if I’m in trouble.”

“Sir -,”

“Colonel, Ms Waller _explicitly_ said -,”

Flag closed the door firmly, shutting them out with a bang. The soldiers scrambled to alert someone important to the shenanigans, or to tell them not to light the place up like they had when Harley had escaped, that the situation was contained. And it _was_ contained, Floyd realised with a jolt.

Flag shucked off his jacket and pulled up a chair, slapping the pack of cards on the bedside table.

“Hope you took out the jokers,” Floyd mumbled, and Flag gave him one of the few genuine smiles he’d ever seen on the man, crinkling his eyes and flashing his teeth.

Floyd swore under his breath. He must be going soft.

 

*

 

“How’s your girl, by the way? What was her name, June?”

They were on the transport vehicle back to Louisiana. The jet was out of commission, or so Flag had told him, his face grave. It was just as likely Waller had commandeered it last minute for her own purposes, or one of the big wigs at the top of the food chain had denied them it due to ‘budget constraints’. Floyd was tempted to ask how much a rice grain-sized bomb cost them in that case, but he liked his skull intact.

“She’s fine,” said Flag, watching his feet.

The truck continued to trundle them down the highway, the undone restraints flapping against the steel interior. Floyd was lying freely on a bench opposite Flag, his legs crossed as he looked at the Polaroid photo of him and his daughter, both boasting multicoloured party hats and plates of cake. Flag had taken the picture that day, smirking all the while at Floyd’s half-assed attempt at dressing up – his Superman t-shirt made him look like such a _dad_ though that Floyd wasn’t even bothered. In that frozen, eternal moment he was just a regular father, on his kid’s regular twelfth birthday.

“You don’t talk about her much,” noted Floyd, tucking the photograph inside his jumpsuit and sitting up.

“Yeah, well. I don’t see her much, so.” Flag cleared his throat. “That would be why.”

Floyd put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward conspiratorially. “No shit? You guys break up?”

Flag looked distinctly uncomfortable, but he nodded once. “She didn’t want to work under Waller anymore. Got a job as a researcher in a museum in London, and asked me to come with her.” Flag’s eyes were still downcast. “She wasn’t happy when I said I wanted to stay. But I think she understood. And she really did want a fresh start, even if that had to be without me.”

For a minute the only sounds were the rushing of passing cars outside, and the rattle of the reinforced vehicle walls.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was for the best.”

Floyd let his back rest against the truck interior, folding his arms. “I think so too.”

Flag clearly didn’t know what to say to that, so Floyd launched into a colourful description of his ex-wife, who hadn’t been so much a spouse as a cellmate in the prison of their disastrous marriage. Flag had met her a few times, but skated over any contentious impressions with a neutral “she seemed like a nice lady,” ignoring the barks of laughter this elicited from Floyd.

“Only married her ‘cause of Zoe,” he said absently, staring out the back window, its panes covered in mesh. “I didn’t love her or anything. I know she never loved me.” He chuckled darkly. “Better to be married to the job, anyway.”

“I hear that,” grunted Flag.

Floyd played with a loose seatbelt as they descended into a companionable silence.

“This job has its perks, too,” he chanced, not meeting Flag’s eyes.

Someone knocked loudly on the partition separating the driver’s seat from the back, making them both start.

“One hour till we reach Terrebonne, Colonel,” a voice chirped from the hidden side. Flag went about fidgeting with his vest and equipment, his brow furrowed and his cheeks flushed ever so slightly as he busied himself. Floyd noticed, of course. A marksman has to be able to see well under any conditions.

 

*

 

Floyd found, to his own utmost surprise, that Belle Reve Penitentiary had given him something he’d never experienced in his life as a hitman; peace.

Tedium and frustration were a side effect of that too, of course, and he missed good food and his daughter. Not in that order. But he still go to see her every month, and wrote her every single day, reams and reams of nonsense that always seemed to end in ‘ _I’m sorry. I love you_.’

The lack of daily murder was probably helping mend his soul a little too, or so he hoped. He wasn’t sure what the rate was like on people like him getting into Heaven, even if he was remorseful. Well. He _almost_ was.

That and he had his meetings with Flag, which he refused to dub ‘hang sessions’ no matter how many times the night guard enquired after them by that name.

They played cards most often, because apparently letting him anywhere near Risk or Trivial Pursuit was asking for trouble. Sometimes Flag smuggled him an espresso from Harley’s abandoned machine – the janitorial crew had appropriated it, but liked Flag and let him make coffee whenever he pleased. That led to them gossiping like old women, or having serene games of chess when they weren’t feeling particularly chatty. One day, Flag asked him if he played golf.

“I went to a mini-golf course once with Zoe. That count?”

“Eh. At least I know you can hold a club.”

“Why do you ask?” Floyd downed the dregs in the paper cup, the coffee dark and almost unpalatably bitter. Just how he liked it.

Flag shrugged in a consciously non–committal way. “I thought - if you wanted to go one day. I might be able to wrangle it.”

“Jeez Lou _ise_ Richard Flag, are you asking me out on a date?”

“Christ,” groaned Flag, crunching his empty cup in his fist and standing up to leave. “Forget I said anything.”

“No, no,” said Floyd hurriedly, feeling inexplicably awkward. “That would be nice. I mean. Anywhere outside this cell would be nice, but, you know what I mean.”

“I was going to say Zoe could come. My cousin’s kid has some clubs she could borrow.”

Floyd frowned dubiously. “I find it hard to believe Waller would sanction that.”

Flag smiled the crinkly smile that made his heart flip.

“Even Waller has to take vacations every once in a while.”

That had been more than a week ago. Floyd felt warmth blossom in his chest at the memory, before something cold and hard thudded painfully in its place. Flag hadn’t come to see him since that day.

His routine was interrupted, and so was his peace. He asked the different rote shifts of the guards about Flag’s absence, whether he was on a mission or something more sinister that made him sick to think about. The kinder ones ignored him completely. Some of them laughed in his face. One or two made up stories to lure him towards false hope, ones which always ended with Flag either dead, or something more callously imaginative: “he’s taken up with the crocodile monster now. Didn’t you hear? You’re not on the menu anymore, Deathstroke.”

“It’s _Deadshot_.”

“Like I fucking care, convict. Now shut the hell up.”

Floyd spent three weeks in a vicious cycle of conjuring up plausible scenarios for the missing soldier - most of them as fatalistic as the guards’ versions - and telling himself he didn’t care, before his worry came crashing back like a tsunami. When days of doing that made him want to vomit, he unleashed every ounce of his fear and rage on the punching bag in his cell, which burst a seam and broke its chain after half a day. He slept as much as he could, though he was barely managing a few hours a night, and after a week stopped eating. The newest guard, his moustache as thick and foul as he was, threatened to shove a feeding tube down his throat if he didn’t eat. Floyd would wait till he turned around, then flushed what he could, choking down what he couldn’t.

His undelivered letters to Zoe went something like this:

_Dear Zoe,_

_~~I’m not sure how it came to this~~ _

_Dear Zoe,_

_~~I always hated being alive, but now~~ _

_Dear Zoe,_

_~~I’m sorry, I love you~~ _

Floyd dreamed about Amanda Waller more than anything else. In those dreams, she smiled horribly, her mouth red like the Joker’s, and didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Floyd was certain, wildly but instinctively, that she was winning. He wasn’t sure at what.

 

*

 

“Floyd? Floyd, you there, man? Wake up you lazy ass. Come on.”

There was something horrifying hovering over his face. If Floyd hadn’t been half-starved and bone-tired, he would have shot out a hand to wrap around its throat. As it was, his reflexes were about as impressive as a sloth’s right about now.

Floyd made as though to sit up, and cowered slightly on his bed, blinking the person in front of him into view.

God damn.

“I thought you said you weren’t a hugger,” said Flag weakly, muffled by Floyd’s shoulder. Floyd was gripping the back of Flag’s jacket like it was a buoy in the middle of the Pacific, his breath hitching a little. It was mortifying, he knew that intellectually; but he was drained of energy, and half delirious with relief.

“Bastard,” he hissed, and released him, one hand still curled on his shoulder. He stood back and only then got a proper look at him, barely managing not to gasp like a girl. It was a close thing.

Flag’s handsome face was lit up like a rainbow with bruises, butterfly stitches trailing up his jaw like a railroad covering a grisly cut. A patch of gauze on his forehead hid some other undoubtedly equally heinous wound, and his posture was odd – he was close to hunching over, like he had a broken rib. Or four. Floyd knew what that looked like better than anyone. His left arm was encased in a cast, which Floyd surmised was what had been pressing against his abdomen when he leapt on Flag. Not just happy to see him then.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ , Flag. What the hell happened?”

“I was gonna ask the same thing.” Said Flag seriously. “You on a diet or somethin’ Floyd? You look like a corpse.”

 “Answer the question, dumbass.”

Flag tried to look indifferent as he proffered his mangled arm. “What, this old thing?” He shrugged cheerfully. “Ran into some disgruntled buddies on a mission. They uh. They decided to let me know they were annoyed.”

Floyd wanted to scream. “Where were your men?”

“Transporting the dignitary we were dispatched to escort. Rescuing me would’ve put the HVT in danger, so they went ahead with -,”

“You were taken? And they didn’t come for you?”

“They did, of course they did,” said Flag quickly. “After five days, the squadron -,”

Floyd cut him off with a raised hand, surer than he was that the sky was blue that if he heard another word, he was going to steal a gun and hunt Waller down.

“Five days,” he said. “Flag. Why didn’t you let me go with you?  That’s what I’m here for right?”

“It wasn’t supposed to turn bad,” said Flag gently. His eyes were mournful. “It was supposed to be stealth. I fucked it up.”

“Yeah, you have a real problem with getting yourself kidnapped, buddy,” Floyd snapped, damn near hysterical. “We’re meant to be a squad. We protect each other.”

He slumped back down on the bed, scrubbing a hand over his head. Flag came toward him slowly and deposited a sandwich, a banana and a flask of water in Floyd’s lap. Floyd hadn’t even noticed he was holding them.

“Don’t eat it too quickly,” he said softly. He turned as if to leave, and Floyd’s heart went into overdrive.

“Don’t,” he said hoarsely.

Flag didn’t need any more than that, joining him on the bed as casually as he could. He huffed when he sat down, a hand darting to his side.

“Fuckers kept kicking in the same spot,” he said breezily, before catching Floyd’s incredulous glare and settling back in silence. Floyd ate his meal at a snail’s pace, stupidly afraid that Flag would leave the second he finished. The battered soldier didn’t seem like he was in a hurry, placidly humming Creedence Clearwater Revival as he slouched beside him.

“You take me next time,” he said after almost three quarters of an hour, when he thought Flag was beginning to drift off. “You take me and Boomer, and Croc and Katana as well if you have to. I’ll find Harley myself, and drag her from that freakin’ clown if you need me to. But don’t go alone.”

He didn’t look around to check, but he knew Flag was smiling in the way that made clocks stop and blood race.

“Noted.”

 

*

 

Not long after Flag’s last scar had faded to a blushing pink, Floyd sat in his cell after lunch, his eyes glued to the small box of a television that he’d wheedled out of the pliable Colonel. It only had two channels, but it sure beat the boredom on slower days.

“ _Are you seeing this Marty? This – this entity, this Darkseid – he’s just taken out the Flash!_ ”

“ _Stand by, Barbara – I’m seeing – is that – oh my – dear God in Heaven, is that Superman?_ ”

Floyd dropped the apple he’d long since abandoned.

 

*

 

“What’s in Qurac?”

“The Jihad, Flo – I mean, Deadshot.”

Floyd smirked, and Croc rumbled one of his hair-raising guffaws. Boomer was idly petting his pink unicorn, which for once, Floyd wished _was_ a euphemism. The stuffed animal was a washed-out salmon colour, and so worn that the stitching was tearing, leaking white. He looked irritated.

“I thought it was pronounced Iraq.”

“Well shit, Harkness. You got me. Ain’t I the stupid one.”

“It’s a different country, jackass,” Floyd muttered. He was tapping his foot impatiently, eager to hold his guns again. Flag was taking his sweet time laying out the mission briefing.

“There’s a metahuman faction that we’ve been instructed to take out. They’re the old-fashioned type crazy, you know, got their sights set on blowing up the moon or some shit.”

“Let me guess,” said Floyd, “the government’s trying to blame Superman for inflaming their imaginations?”

“The government doesn’t officially know,” said Flag. “We don’t exist, remember?”

Boomer tapped the side of his nose knowledgably.

“So it’s just us?” asked Floyd, gesturing to their decimated numbers. “ _We’re_ the cavalry?”

“Katana’s meeting us there. And there’s a shipment coming in this evening,” said Flag, his eyes glittering. “Your new backup. A real zoo. I’m talking sharks, tigers, cheetahs, even spiders…”

Floyd bristled. “You know you’re creepy when you do that mystery shit, man.”

Flag grinned and approached him, handing him a hefty Glock and pointing to a figure in the distance. 2549 feet, give or take. Floyd wished he had his monocle.

“That’s Duvall over there. I’ve taken him off warden rotation, but he used to -,”

“Oh I remember him,” said Floyd icily, cocking the gun with a flourish and aiming. “He was a storyteller.”

“Well – yeah.”

Floyd smiled.

“Listen, just scare him, all right? I don’t -,”

He fired, and Duvall’s tiny hat spun clear off his tiny head while his screech echoed back to them, sounding an awful lot like a dying flamingo.

Flag was laughing, and so was Croc. Boomer had a hand over his eyes to block out the sun, squinting in the vague direction of the terrified guard.

“Did you hit him?” he asked hopefully. “You might want to try again mate. I think his head’s still attached.”

“Time enough for that,” said Floyd, admiring the gun. “Colonel Flag? You want to pull yourself together and get me the rest of my shit or what?”

_

**Author's Note:**

> \- There's a few references to other members of the comics' Suicide Squad. I tried not to be pretentious about it.
> 
> \- The drive from Gotham (reportedly located in the state of New Jersey) to Louisiana would actually take about 21 hours. Rick and Floyd either had a super long talk or.... did something else :) :) :)
> 
> \- I inserted some newsworthy Justice League events that I imagined would have made the news. I figured that would be another seismic shift in the DC universe, and how they view meta-humans. The Suicide Squad would take on fewer world-ending scenarios, probably.
> 
>  
> 
> ****
> 
> Thank you to everyone who comments, I assure you I read and love every single one!


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